As Documents Show Wider Oil Industry Knowledge of CO2 Climate Impacts, a “Take it Back” Proposal

Documents published by InsideClimate News show that oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute (API) were gauging carbon dioxide's climate impacts decades ago.Credit InsideClimate News

Updated, 8:38 p.m. | There are new revelations from the continuing InsideClimate News investigation of what the oil industry knew about the potential climate impacts of carbon dioxide from fuel burning even as it sought delays in related national and international policies.

The headline and deck on today’s story neatly summarize the news:

Exxon’s oil industry peers knew about climate dangers in the 1970s, too. Members of an American Petroleum Institute task force on CO2 included scientists from nearly every major oil company, including Exxon, Texaco and Shell.

Below you can read my proposal for what the industry might do to make the best use of its deep knowledge of carbon dioxide and climate change, along with its scientific and technical capacity.

Here’s a snippet from Neela Banerjee’s article, but please read the rest at the link below:

The American Petroleum Institute together with the nation’s largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone, was aware of its possible impact on the world’s climate far earlier than previously known.

The group’s members included senior scientists and engineers from nearly every major U.S. and multinational oil and gas company, including Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, Phillips, Texaco, Shell, Sunoco, and Sohio, according to internal documents obtained by InsideClimate News and interviews with the task force’s former director. [Read the rest.]

In a memo to superiors, revealed in InsideClimate’s earlier reporting, Weinberg wrote: “What would be more appropriate than for the world’s leading energy company and leading oil company [to] take the lead in trying to define whether a long-term CO2 problem really exists and, if so, what counter measures would be appropriate.”

The proposal was not embraced, needless to say.

While others pursue investigations that may or may not bear fruit (but will surely enrich several generations of lawyers), I have an idea for something that could start now.

A proposed logo for a possible effort by ExxonMobil to develop the capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Credit Andrew C. Revkin

In late November, I had an initial email exchange about this notion with Kenneth P. Cohen, Exxon’s vice president for public and government affairs. He responded, “We actually have some very interesting/promising work underway in the CO2 capture area,” but couldn’t elaborate at the time. I’m looking forward to hearing more.

Here are articles describing the kinds of efforts I’m thinking about — all of which are very different than simply catching and compressing CO2 from smokestacks and pumping it into the ground (a process that remains a pipe dream at anything approaching the necessary scale):

To stabilize temperatures at any level, be it 1.5℃, 2℃ or even 3℃, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. Most governments, environmental groups and business leaders now understand this. And it is acknowledged, albeit implicitly, in Article 4 of the Paris agreement, which calls for greenhouse emissions to be “balanced” by carbon sinks some time after mid-century.

But we’re unlikely to hit “net zero” emissions before temperatures reach 2℃, and even less likely before they reach 1.5℃. Warming is currently at about 1℃ and rising by 0.1℃ every five to ten years. We could slow the warming by reducing emissions, of course. But if we fail to reduce at the required rate – and the inadequate emissions targets indicate this is the intention – then we will be left with no option but to scrub the excess CO2 back out of the atmosphere in future.

Owners of fossil fuel assets

That is why the deal is like a gigantic take-back scheme. The proof lies in what is not said in the Paris agreement. There is no explicit mention of a global carbon budget for instance, which adds up total emissions since the industrial revolution. That is despite the fact that all governments have acknowledged, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the reality that stabilising temperatures requires a limit on cumulative CO2 emissions. Certain countries simply cannot accept the suggestion that they may be obliged to leave some of their prized fossil carbon reserves underground.

And why should they? We do not need, and nor have we any right, to ban India from using its coal. We simply need to ensure that, by the time global temperatures reach 2℃ (or 1.5℃ if that is what is eventually deemed safe), any company that sells fossil fuels, or any carbon-intensive product like conventional cement, is obliged to take back an equivalent amount of CO2 and dispose of it safely to ensure it doesn’t end up in the atmosphere. [Read on.]

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.